Studies in Higher Education

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Depicting and researching disciplines: strong and

moderate essentialist approaches

Paul Trowler

To cite this article: Paul Trowler (2014) Depicting and researching disciplines: strong and
moderate essentialist approaches, Studies in Higher Education, 39:10, 1720-1731, DOI:
10.1080/03075079.2013.801431

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.801431

Published online: 18 Jun 2013.

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Studies in Higher Education, 2014
Vol. 39, No. 10, 1720–1731, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.801431

Depicting and researching disciplines: strong and moderate

essentialist approaches
Paul Trowler*

Higher Education Research and Evaluation Centre, Lancaster University, UK

This paper considers how the idea of ‘discipline’ can best be conceptualised, both in
general and particular terms. Much previous research has employed a strong
essentialist approach, a model of disciplines which exaggerates the homogeneity of
specific disciplinary features and accords disciplines generative powers which they
rarely possess. That approach is disabling because it closes down the appreciation
of the heterogeneity within disciplines, as well as occluding the reasons for that
heterogeneity. However, for researchers this oversimplified model offers the
attractions of simple research questions and research designs. The consequence of
using such a model is, though, that its distortions threaten the robustness of higher
education research. The paper argues for a more sophisticated conceptualisation of
disciplines, one which deploys a moderate form of essentialism. It applies
Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances to the task of depicting disciplines
and explores the implications for research of this more nuanced model.
Keywords: disciplines; research; essentialism; higher education; family
resemblances

Introduction
This paper argues that much of the literature on the nature of disciplines in higher edu-
cation has adopted a strong essentialist position, usually epistemological essentialism,
and that this is disabling insofar as it closes down an appreciation of the complexity of
disciplines as a whole and of individual examples of them. It also occludes the mech-
anisms at work which result in heterogeneity and dynamism within disciplines.
However, the paper does not retreat to a relativist ‘voice’ argument (Young 2000,
2008) which says (in summary) that a discipline cannot be captured in generalised
terms but is, rather, little more than what its practitioners say it is. Instead the paper
commends a moderate form of essentialism for having both descriptive and heuristic
power. While strong essentialism (as seen in, for example, biological essentialism or
African essentialism) is unhelpful and disabling, a moderate form of essentialism is
valuable, even necessary, in the study of social science.

Essentialist views of disciplines: strong and moderate

A strong version of essentialism as a concept involves two things: the claim that a
phenomenon has a definable and necessary character, an essential property or properties

*Email: p.trowler@lancaster.ac.uk

© 2013 Society for Research into Higher Education

 Studies in Higher Education 1721

which distinguish it from other phenomena, and that these characteristics have genera-
tive power; that is, their presence significantly affects other phenomena around them.
To take each of these characteristics in turn and apply them to disciplines: the first
strong essentialist feature is that it posits that the concept of ‘academic disciplines’
involves a unique set of characteristics at its core which situates it as being clearly
itself, and not for example belonging within another concept or category such as
‘hobbies’. Further, each particular example of a discipline within that category has
unique identifying characteristics which mark it as being itself, for example being soci-
ology and not anthropology.
There are a number of examples of this approach as Krishnan’s (2009) account of
different theoretical ‘takes’ on disciplines demonstrates. Janet Donald echoes earlier
examples (e.g. Berger 1970) in demonstrating this kind of thinking in her definition
of academic disciplines which, she says, have:

a body of knowledge with a reasonably logical taxonomy, a specialized vocabulary, an

accepted body of theory, a systematic research strategy, and techniques for replication
and validity. (Donald 2002, 8)

The position adopted in this paper sees this as a disembodied, abstract notion of disci-
plines, one which floats in the ether. Giddens (1976) points out that if we look for social
structures we will not find them, because they do not exist independently of their articu-
lation in practice. Similarly it is not possible to capture disciplines as abstract entities.
Disciplines become apparent in their playing out in the world, in the process of insti-
tutionalisation and in the discursive and other practices which give them substance.
The university, the site of the articulation of disciplines, is absent from such abstract
definitions as Donald’s, as is the dynamism that disciplines display: growing, morphing
and splitting (Clark and Neave 1992). In that dynamic process fundamental precepts
become challenged by internal debates, new theoretical approaches develop, and new
questions arise and new research strategies and techniques are deployed to answer
them. This definition is also challengeable even on its own terms: by this definition
one might say that astrology is a discipline (the issues around techniques for replication
and validity being highly debatable there, just as in some ‘accepted’ disciplines).
This problem of abstraction in describing disciplines is present too in Bernstein’s
(2000) concepts of vertical and horizontal structures and discourses. Bernstein claims
that disciplines differ inherently in relation to their ability to achieve greater and greater
levels of generalisability: vertically structured ones can achieve generalisation, horizon-
tally structured ones cannot. They also differ in the degree to which their claims can be
corroborated against reality: they have a strong or weak language of description, or ‘gram-
maticality’, according to Bernstein. Verticality or horizontality tend to be aligned in any
one discipline, he argues. Like Donald’s definition, this is an abstract account, demonstrat-
ing the first element of essentialism through its argument: that phenomena have intrinsic,
essential, properties. Critics have shown that moving beyond this level of abstraction
reveals a much more complex, and contradictory, situation with regard to disciplines,
and have criticised Bernstein for adopting a dualism that obscures more than it illuminates
(Moore and Muller 2000; Penrose 2006; Young 2008).
The second characteristic of essentialism, its generative power, is very evident in the
Academic Tribes and Territories framework originally set out by Becher (1989) and
subsequently modified in Becher and Trowler (2001). This argued not only that each
discipline has particular and essential knowledge properties, but that these properties
1722 P. Trowler

are generative, in a direct and universal way, of specific cultural characteristics among
disciplinary practitioners. It posited the driver of disciplinary cultures as being the
structure of knowledge within each discipline. These knowledge drivers, that argument
ran, resulted (or would result) in distinctive tribal characteristics within each discipline
that would be found across the world. This even extends to leisure-time: ‘physicists
were inclined towards an interest in the theatre, art and music, whereas the engineers’
typical leisure activities included aviation, deep-sea diving and “messing about in
boats”’ (Becher 1989, 106).
Other authors followed this line, or developed a similar essentialist one themselves.
Neumann, for example, argues for a ‘strong influence of disciplines on academics’
beliefs, on teaching and on students’ learning’ (Neumann 2001, 144) and tried to
specify the distinctive characteristics of practices in different disciplines with regard
to learning and teaching, generated by differences in their knowledge structures:

In considering educational goals … hard disciplines [such as physics] place greater impor-
tance on student career preparation and emphasise cognitive goals such as learning facts,
principles and concepts. Soft areas [such as English] place greater importance on broad
general knowledge, on student character development and on effective thinking skills
such as critical thinking … Soft pure fields placed greater importance on creativity of
thinking and oral and written expression, while hard pure and hard applied fields
placed strong emphasis on ability to apply methods and principles … Hard areas
require memorisation and application of course material, while soft disciplines are
more likely to have exam questions requiring analysis and synthesis of course content
… (Neumann 2001, 138)

Donald did likewise:

Psychology professors talked of developing students’ capabilities through a series of

courses which focus on different methods … In education, case studies are seen as impor-
tant instructional methods to aid students in making complex situations coherent. English
literature professors paid attention to the analysis of text to determine the underlying
assumptions … and they were concerned with the development of argument in their
courses. (Donald 1995, 16)

Strong essentialism, with its twin requirements, is conceptually limiting as is the reduc-
tionism and determinism that usually accompany it. But this should not lead to a
thoughtless rush to relativist constructionism which dismisses regularities in social
life and the possibility of going beyond only contextual accounts (Young 2000). A
nuanced depiction of academic tribes and their territories recognises that disciplinary
territories do not directly and singularly have behavioural effects, and the behaviours
we see amongst academic staff are a result of the emergent properties of a combination
of factors. However they are not chaotic, nor are they only the productive of construc-
tive processes occurring locally. They have regularities and are constrained in particular
ways. A nuanced ontology goes beyond rigid categorisation and offers accounts of
social life which recognise impermanence, conditionality and the significance of differ-
ent ontological strata. A moderate essentialist position can offer this kind of ontology,
and the next section of the paper goes on to explicate this.

A revised position
The position adopted here is that, firstly, the category ‘discipline’ does not have a set of
essential characteristics which are all necessarily present in every instance. Secondly
 Studies in Higher Education 1723

that each individual discipline has no essential ‘core characteristics’ either, in the sense
of being all present and identifiable at all times. Finally the paper argues that the gen-
erative power of disciplines, the power to affect other phenomena in significant ways,
does exist, but is more like the power output of a wind turbine than that of a power
station. In other words it is variable and contextually contingent. Such a position has
‘practical adequacy’ (Sayer 1997, 2010), that is, it is usefully illuminating and can actu-
ally be applied in research and other areas of practice.
The generative power of disciplines waxes and wanes over time, both long and short
term, and between contexts and sites of practice. As a result it is not possible to make
any general statements about this power other, perhaps, than saying that it has declined
as a force generally over the past three or four decades. It is not surprising that the
accounts of the nature and extent of the generative power of disciplines in the literature
display considerable variety in their claims. They vary in the claimed scope of this
power into other areas and in its strength. The descriptions used vary from fairly
weak words such as ‘preferences’, ‘styles’, ‘rituals’ and ‘tendencies’ through to
firmer ones such as ‘approaches’ or ‘practices’. This lack of agreement stems from
the fact that generative powers are not consistent over time, place or context of
expression.
If the metaphor of ‘territories’ still has any purchase, then what that term encom-
passes in the twenty-first century needs to go well beyond the epistemological struc-
tures of disciplines (its original use) and to incorporate the many other factors which
condition academic cultures. Technologies, ideologies, marketisation, globalisation
and the rise of the evaluative state among other forces at play condition, in their inter-
actions, how academics behave.
To put flesh on the bones of those statements the paper deploys Wittgenstein’s
(1953) notion of ‘family resemblances’. This offers a conceptual foot-hold in under-
standing how moderate essentialism can work in the way just described. Wittgenstein
points out that different members of a human family display a cluster of features which
are significant to that family. Not everyone in the family shares them all, yet they are
recognisable as family members. The same is true of some categories of phenomena
which belong in the same ‘family’ or genre, for example that of games. One game
may have features in common with a different type of game, but lack that commonality
when compared to another type of game. Nonetheless we recognise them both as
‘games’; chess and poker, for example. Generally it is possible to distinguish
‘games’ from ‘sports’, but as in other instances where categories are close, there are
sometimes cases in which distinctions are blurred; golf, for example. This is also
true of disciplines as a category and true too of different instantiations of the ‘same’
discipline in different contexts. So academic historians, for example, may display
very different characteristics in different universities, though there are still some
common features between them which render them recognisable as ‘historians’. Witt-
genstein’s account is a moderately essentialist one in this respect: it argues that
phenomena have objective defining features but does not require them all to be
present in every instance.
If variability in characteristics, within limits set by a pool of possible features, is the
first feature of family resemblances, a second is that the resemblances can be different at
different levels of analysis, in different ‘ontological strata’ (Sayer 1997). Like the first,
this demonstrates the moderate essentialism of the Wittgenstein’s argument. Applied to
disciplines it means that viewed from a distance they may seem to have certain common
characteristics, but viewed close up those characteristics crumble in the analytical hand.
1724 P. Trowler

Meanwhile at that level other resemblances across disciplines come to the fore. In short,
granularity matters.
Academic law, for example, when viewed close up can have characteristics that are
closer to gender studies than to other approaches to academic law: critical legal studies
is very different from black letter law, though both can exist side-by-side in a law
department (Cownie 2004, 2012). Disciplines are the site of struggle of competing
viewpoints, the site of power plays: what Bresnen and Burrell (2012) describe as
Mode O (in contrast to the better-known Mode 1 and Mode 2: Gibbons et al. 1994;
Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons 2001, 2003). There are often more similarities than differ-
ences between, say, critical legal studies and sociology, with greater divisions inside
academic law (at least as articulated in some places) than there are between those
two disciplines. Strong essentialist accounts flatten out internal differences and
occlude complexity. Nonetheless, we should not confuse essential properties and acci-
dental properties: there can be huge differences in the accidental properties of, say, aca-
demic law, but it still remains academic law as long as it shares some familial
resemblances with other articulations of that discipline (considered at a particular onto-
logical stratum and in particular relational context) are in place.
Thirdly, family resemblances can be different in respect of different sets of
relations. So disciplines as articulated in a research context are different than when
articulated in learning and teaching contexts. This distinction is key in Bernstein’s
notion (2000) of the pedagogic device and his distinction between discipline as
research and discipline as curriculum. Bernstein counsels us to pay careful attention
to the site of practice of a discipline and notes how a process of recontextualisation
occurs as disciplines become translated into pedagogical practices and pedagogical dis-
courses through the operation of three sets of rules: distribution rules; recontextualisa-
tion rules; and evaluative rules. The distribution and recontextualisation rules together
provide an account of how disciplinary knowledge practices are situated differently in
teaching–learning interactions than they are in research practices (Bernstein 2000;
Maton and Muller 2007; Ashwin 2009). The distribution rules order the regulation
and distribution of what counts as worthwhile knowledge in a society, determining
for example what is and is not eligible to count as ‘English Literature’ and be included
in syllabuses in that discipline. The recontextualisation rules render disciplinary knowl-
edge into a form amenable to being taught, and learned, for example in textbooks. The
evaluative rules offer different principles from those for research on which to judge
these new pedagogical practices, setting out what is and what is not acceptable as an
assessable piece of work, and what the standards are. Academic teachers in interaction
with their students ‘translate’ the above rules into rules for the production of legitimate
text by students and the evaluation of that text. This involves teachers and student inter-
preting the curriculum produced by the recontextualisation rules. Even within discipline
as curriculum, detailed enactment will vary: academic architecture as articulated in the
lecture theatre is not the same as that articulated in the field, in discussion with clients or
at the drawing board or computer (Winberg 2003, 2012).
To Bernstein’s ‘discipline as research’ and ‘discipline as curriculum’, we can add
other sites of practice within universities such as the committee meeting, individual
negotiations, and practices associated with income generation. In these cases and
others ‘what the discipline is’ is also recontextualised and rearticulated, just as in the
sites of teaching and research. It takes new forms but retains at least some familial
resemblances to other forms. Often the discipline will be used as a form of symbolic
capital (Bourdieu 1984), deployed to provide authority to claims for resources. The
 Studies in Higher Education 1725

nature of ‘the discipline’ in research practices is recontextualised when academics turn

to learning and teaching, and recontextualised again in committee meetings, practices
associated with winning funding, and so on. In short, disciplines are socially situated
(Mathieson 2012). So, in this view, ‘disciplinary practices’ should be seen as unstable,
contextually contingent and shaped by multiple strong forces.
We can also say that disciplines are expressed very differently in different locales
even in equivalent sites of practice. So, sociology as expressed at the Università Catto-
lica del Sacro Cuore in Italy is very different from that at the University of Lancaster in
the UK and both different again from its expression at Rhodes University in Grahams-
town, South Africa. Moving between contexts such as those will leave the observer
with impressions that are at once familiar and strange: there will be things they recog-
nise and things that surprise about the articulation of disciplines in these different con-
texts. (See Ashwin, Abbas, and McLean 2012 for a developed illustration of this point.)
Finally, the characteristics of family resemblances are dynamic: they change over
time yet retain recognisability. To stay with Wittgenstein’s ‘game’ example, techno-
logical developments have brought about completely new forms of games with charac-
teristics unknown previously, yet we still recognise them as games (as in video game
retailer ‘Gamestation’). Similarly a particular discipline can change very markedly
over time, but it is still ‘the same’ discipline. This illustrates how a moderate form of
essentialism does not assert that the distinguishing features of a phenomenon such as
disciplines are permanent, at whatever ontological stratum one views them.
The family resemblances concept allows us to adopt a view of disciplines which is
not restrictive: it is permissive of complexity and as such is only moderately essential-
ist. Turning to the second characteristic of essentialism, the generative power of
phenomena, it follows from Wittgenstein’s position that phenomena are not necessarily
or uniformly generative because their characteristics are variable.
However, a moderate essentialism goes further than this and says that there is no
necessary correspondence between the set of distinguishing properties and the genera-
tive properties of a class of objects. Some or all of the distinguishing properties may be
trivial, and insignificant compared to ‘accidental’ properties in terms of effecting
change in other phenomena. Moreover the effects of other factors outside those
brought about by the phenomenon under consideration will influence its ability to gen-
erate effects. Relating these abstract points to the discussion of disciplines, the charac-
teristics of a particular discipline may or may not have significant effects on other
phenomena (such as teaching styles) in at a particular time and place.
To sum up: the ontological standpoint based on this set of propositions says that
objects such as disciplines can have multiple and variable characteristics, depending
on their sets of relations and the level of analysis at which they are viewed. They do
however draw (differently) on a set of familial characteristics. They also have
varying generative properties of different power which are not necessarily linked to
their characteristics, their familial resemblances, and some of which are not unique
to them.

Retaining essentialism
Sayer (1997) argues that deploying a form of essentialism in social science research is
necessary for two critical reasons, linked to the two characteristics of essentialism itself
with which the paper began. First for reasons of conceptual clarity; because it is always
necessary in research to categorise and distinguish between phenomena by identifying
1726 P. Trowler

what they are and what they are not: to ‘sort things out’ (Bowker and Star 2000).
Second, for reasons of explanatory power, because it is one of the tasks of social
science to explain aspects of the world through establishing how the social world
works, to show how phenomena are linked and to map the flow of causality. Causality
need not, of course, be singular or even regular, it need not be permanent. But without a
causal account of some sort there is no explanatory purchase. For Sayer, the develop-
ment of a moderate essentialism is a pre-requisite for a critical social science, because
accounts that lack an attempt to identify structured regularities and links between the
properties of phenomena and emergent outcomes simply have no conceptual purchase
on structured inequalities. Critical realists such as Sayer point out that a strong anti-
essentialist position is devoid of emancipatory possibilities because it sees the social
world as ‘a turbulent system, where “order” and “consensus” emerge locally and for
the time being, if at all’ (Fuchs 2001, 4). The clear vision required to see the mechan-
isms of inequity is lost in this view of the world and how it works.

Recognising disciplines
The account of disciplines set out above raises two important questions: first, if dyna-
mism and internal diversity so characterise individual disciplines as they are articulated
in different places and at different times, how are they recognisable at all? Generally
speaking people are able to distinguish disciplines from hobbies or journalism, and
to see that sociology is different from anthropology and social geography. How does
this happen? Secondly, how much change can a discipline undergo before we conclude
that it is no longer what it was but something different?
This issue of categorisation, of ‘sorting things out’ (Bowker and Star 2000) is not
just an academic one: it has real consequences. For example there have been heated
debates about whether schoolchildren doing arithmetic with a calculator are really
doing mathematics, whether the pole-vaulter using a new high-performance technologi-
cally-enhanced pole is really doing pole-vaulting (Wertsch, Del Rio and Alvarez 1995),
and whether Oscar Pistorius, the ‘blade runner’ with prosthetic legs, was really running
the 400 metres when he broke the world record. Such questions are not primarily about
fairness but about categories.
This paper draws on Turner’s account (2001) of connectionist learning to illuminate
how this type of categorisation happens in situations of complexity. A connectionist
approach contrasts with an essentialist one. The latter assumes that learning categorical
distinctions involves tacitly learning a list of characteristics that a phenomenon must
have in order to be itself: its essential characteristics. We tacitly learn the distinguishing
features of sociology, anthropology and geography, respectively and apply those cri-
teria to particular instances of disciplines. In short, the process is algorithmic in
character.
By contrast a connectionist account argues that the meaning of a concept is infer-
entially derived through a process of receiving feedback on behaviour based on infor-
mation received about that concept. Behaviours and responses that ‘work’ are arrived at
gradually, and concepts firm up cognitively as they no longer receive negative feedback
when they are applied. This process can be described as one involving incremental
teleo-responses. There is no list or rulebook, as in the essentialist view. In Turner’s
account a Darwinian process is occurring: a learning method which often leads to suc-
cessful outcomes, although at the cost of unsuccessful events along the way. Bourdieu
(1990) talks about ‘a sense for the game’ and Giddens (1984) about ‘practical
 Studies in Higher Education 1727

consciousness’, aspects of which cannot be articulated, that are inchoate, impalpable,

tacit. An example is the way we learn to use the words ‘infer’ and ‘surmise’, and dis-
tinguish between them. We are probably never explicitly taught this, and we certainly
don’t consciously refer to and apply a rule about which to use. Despite the subtle differ-
ences between them we come to know how to apply both.
People develop functional equivalents to recognition rules; they do not learn recog-
nition rules themselves. These functional equivalents grow over time and with experi-
ence. But because experiences are different for different people and because the
feedback they receive is contextual, recognition rules are not exactly the same for
everyone (for example even experienced markers will disagree about appropriate
grades for an assignment).
Moreover, the functional equivalents of rules are situationally contingent: they
depend on the context in which the rule-equivalent is applied, and in particular on
the purposes pursued by the object of that rule recognition. Finer levels of discrimi-
nation will be applied when discussing the characteristics of a particular discipline
with its practitioners than with lay-people, for example. Thus these functional equiva-
lents are purpose-relative. More sophisticated levels of these functional equivalents of
rules involve factoring in understandings of the political and pragmatic factors which
condition how they are applied. Bourdieu’s ‘game’ which we develop a sense of
becomes more subtly understood with experience.
For university teachers a familiar example involves the assessment process. With
experience they are able to recognise excellent work and distinguish it from simply
good work or a bare pass, even though the content of essays being assessed may be
very different. They have not achieved this ability by learning a set of explicit
marking criteria in a Boolean, rule-based way, but rather by developing cognitive ‘stan-
dards frameworks’ through experience. Empirical data from research with academics
who were asked to think aloud about the processes involved in making assessments
as they do it (Bloxham, Boyd, and Orr 2011) have demonstrated this:

[Markers] did not show evidence of linear or discrete processing of individual criteria;
indeed they appeared to be involved in multilayered juggling of overlapping elements
in order to reduce them to a single representation in a percentage mark or grade. There
was no evidence of them assigning marks to individual elements and then combining
them to arrive at a final grade. (Bloxham, Boyd, and Orr 2011, 662)

Apart from this recent evidence of how marking is actually done by experienced aca-
demics, Alison Wolf (1995) has shown that attempts to write ‘rulebooks’ through
writing marking criteria to situate the essence of quality in student assignments
which can be universally interpreted identically are always doomed to failure. As Smo-
lensky, Legendre and Miyata say:

… The richness of human behaviour, both in everyday environments and in the control
environments of the psychological laboratory, seems to defy rule-based description, dis-
playing strong sensitivity to subtle … factors in experience … (1993, 382)

Applied to the concept of academic disciplines in general and to specific examples of

them, connectionist learning is applied in relation to the nature of the family resem-
blances of discipline, and of particular disciplines about which information and feed-
back is received. Groupings of elements in different configurations are markers
which assist judgements about the legitimacy of claims to disciplinary status. These
1728 P. Trowler

may include: patterns of discourse; a set of research concerns; conceptual theoretical

tools; a disciplinary saga; a set of knowledge resources; conventions of appropriateness
around research and teaching; and dominant assumptions about ontological and epis-
temological issues. Subtle understandings of discipline also take into account the
internal politics and policies of universities which are significant in affecting the
ways that disciplines are presented and named in their organisational instantiations.

Moderate essentialism: implications for research practices

The approach set out here to conceptualise discipline and disciplines makes research
design a more complex process than a nomothetic, strong essentialist approach does.
In the latter case that process simply involves selecting samples from within categories:
hard versus soft disciplines, pure versus applied ones, urban versus rural and so on. In
this case the assumption is that the categorical distinctions have epistemological and
ontological purchase. There are many examples in social science of such essentialist,
nomothetic approaches: Hofstede (1980, 1991) on individualism versus collectivism
or high versus low-context cultures for example.
Even from a position which acknowledges the critique of strong essentialism it
could be argued that this is acceptable, given appropriate health warnings. Weber’s
(1904/1949) concept of the ‘ideal type’ situates models in research that exaggerate
and diminish aspects of ‘reality’ as an acceptable basis for research, as long as the
model of reality and the reality of the model are not confused, and as long as it
remains clear that ideal types have been created for heuristic purposes only. For
some sets of research questions in some contexts this may be an appropriate path. In
general however this paper has argued that the strong essentialist position is too distort-
ing and does not adequately reflect the complexity of the forces at play.
Before setting out the research implications of a moderately essentialist position it is
helpful to develop a revised definition of ‘discipline’. The following sums up the pos-
ition set out above:

Disciplines are reservoirs of knowledge resources which, in dynamic combination with

other structural phenomena, can condition behavioural practices, sets of discourses,
ways of thinking, procedures, emotional responses and motivations. Together this con-
stellation of factors results in structured dispositions for disciplinary practitioners who
reshape them in different practice clusters into localised repertoires. While alternative
recurrent practices may be in competition within a single discipline, there is common
background knowledge about key figures, conflicts and achievements. Disciplines take
organisational form, have internal hierarchies and bestow power differentially, conferring
advantage and disadvantage.

If such an approach is adopted and applied in research into higher education there are
key implications for what can be known and what truth claims can be made as well as
for developing appropriate research questions and sensible research designs.
What can be known, the epistemological issue, is limited by the fact that a moderate
essentialist position argues that generative effects are contextually contingent and pro-
visional upon other factors. Causality is multiple and the interplay of factors influencing
behaviour plays out differently in different contexts. So no simple statements can be
made about, for example, teaching and learning practices associated with particular dis-
ciplines across multiple sites. Other structural factors, such as the prevalence of man-
agerialist discourse and ideology, played out differently in different locales, are
 Studies in Higher Education 1729

significant in conditioning behaviour, as the definition above suggests. Research can,

however, pick out the factors at play in one site and can offer conceptual clarity
about the kinds of factors that are significant, what others could be in other circum-
stances, and why. Generalisation of findings to a much bigger population, at least in
any simple sense, is not possible. However, research can offer findings which are illu-
minative in nature and so allow improved conceptualisation of the factors at work in
other contexts.
Therefore any research questions posed need to take into account what this position
considers ‘answerable’. Questions can, for example, shape research which unpicks the
influence of disciplinary characteristics in one or two locations, but with limited truth
claims and provisional conclusions. The significance of the research needs to be located
elsewhere than in claims to generalisability to other sites of disciplinary articulation.
This claim to significance may be grounded in research which leads to conceptual clar-
ification, or to the generation or further development of theory. In more developmental
research designs the claim to significance may lie in the implications that are drawn out
for practices, policies, structures and processes in the site of the research. For example,
understanding the significance of disciplinary differences in one university which is
attempting to introduce more flexible, employment-focused curricula may be helpful
to those in other contexts seeking to do similar things, but the research questions and
concomitant findings need to be carefully delimited in that research.
This argument means too that research designs which flow from the research ques-
tions and are shaped to be the most appropriate for answering them also need to be
delimited in specific ways. A moderately essentialist position emphasises contextual
contingency, and this privileges close up, case study-based research designs. Depth
research into numerically limited samples and exploring context and conditioning
factors as thoroughly as possible is more likely to lead to improved understanding of
what is going on than large-scale surveys based on assumptions of comparability.
Adopting an explicit and well-developed conceptual rationale for such depth research
may help mitigate the ‘tribal’ tensions that often arise in the social sciences, including
research into higher education, around the issues of quantitative versus qualitative
methods and large-scale versus small-scale studies. At the same time, however, it is
important not to lose sight of the ways in which larger structural factors impinge on
the local. In higher education, as elsewhere, national and global structural factors
affect everyday reality, sometimes in very significant ways. The marketisation of
higher education, its massification and consumerisation, technological innovation,
new managerialism; the rise of the evaluative state and the fiscal crisis of the state
have direct effects locally but are large-scale structural phenomena.

Conclusion
The above discussion leads to the conclusion that without the disabling characteristics
of strong essentialism, the model of social reality in universities that we have to work
with becomes more complex, more nuanced and closer to depicting real processes
within universities. However this represents a more difficult challenge for researchers
and others than do simple matrices of disciplines based on whether they are pure or
applied, soft or hard, urban or rural as is done in some essentialist accounts.
While such simplistic representations have their attractions for the researcher
looking for a rationale for the research design, they have very little analytical purchase
on the complex world of higher education. This has important consequence for the
1730 P. Trowler

framing of useful research questions, for the elaboration of research designs, as well as
for the nature of the truth claims researchers into higher education can make. It also
changes the map of pathways towards a cumulative development of understanding
through research into higher education. For managers in universities it means even
more complexity in terms of the way they think about the potentialities and limitations
shaped by the disciplinary makeup of their institution: it is difficult to make accurate
generalisations about the character of disciplines and what might be appropriate for
them. It has implications too for educational developers and others interested in enhan-
cing the learning and teaching that goes on in universities, when the patterns of prac-
tices in that regard are so irregular.
Nuancing the understanding of disciplines, and shifting towards a postmodern per-
spective on them, therefore, adds complexity in a number of fields, but offers a less sim-
plistic, essentialist and reductionist account; one that is more appropriate for higher
education in the twenty-first century.

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